Emergency Mapping

This work was led by ITHACA, which currently acts as 24/7 available Emergency Mapping service provider. In the arena of emergency response, saving time and working with accurate, up-to-date mapping information can improve the emergency response coordination and effectiveness.

Most of the standard products to be delivered are based on reference geospatial datasets such as selected topographic features of the area affected by the disaster, in particular exposed assets. Often these reference datasets exist at the local level but cannot be retrieved in a short time frame and therefore are useless in the contest of rapid emergency response activities.

Based on comparisons with real and simulated activations, the ELF platform has proven to minimise the current time-consuming digitising operations based on the visual interpretation of suitable satellite images, thus drastically reducing the delivery time for data. Furthermore, the geometric and thematic accuracy of standard digital maps and raster topographic maps available at local level is generally higher than that achievable through digitising ortho-corrected satellite imagery. Naturally, the benefits depend heavily on the completeness of the NMCA datasets/themes as well as on the level of detail and up-to-dateness.